The government's food watchdog last night declared two large consignments of Bernard Matthews turkey products fit for sale after verifying that neither contained meat from a restricted zone in Hungary.

The H5N1 bird flu strains found in Hungary and Britain are 99.96% genetically identical and almost certainly linked, according to a final analysis of the viruses by the EU Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, Surrey.

Letters: David Miliband says he will continue to report developments in bird flu openly and accurately. Your leader says it is impossible for Defra to be entirely deaf to producer interest. How right you are.

The Observer's website revealed last week that ministers were kept in the dark about the Hungarian connection to Bernard Matthews's turkeys. Now the fall-out from H5N1 will hit shoppers, politicians and a multi-billion-pound business.

On Monday, government ministers said there was 'no Hungarian connection' with the outbreak of H5N1 bird flu at the Bernard Matthews Suffolk plant and that the likeliest source of the infection was wild birds. By Friday, they were backtracking like mad.